Lauren Halsey: emagendat

Author: Lauren Halsey
Publisher: Rizzoli Electa
Year: 2024
Pages: 224
ISBN: 978-0847847815

Inspired by the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood that the artist and her family have lived in for generations, Lauren Halsey’s expansive practice teems with the signs and symbols that populate that urban landscape and celebrates the community’s vitality and a creative form of resistance to advancing gentrification and the threat of erasure.

The artist’s important work centers the on Black community, both aesthetically and materially. Halsey gathers icons of pride, autonomy, initiative, and resilience from local vernacular sources recontextualizing and reinterpreting them for her utopic fantasies of the city. Both celebrating Black cultural expressions and archiving them, her work—which includes wall works, massive multiroom installations, and immersive outdoor environments—is a potent reminder of the importance of community and home.